Laos – TRAVELING WITH ARDEN

After graduating from college (wow this was almost 11 years ago WHAT?!?), I took a trip to Southeast Asia. We visited Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. It was amazing and fascinating, and as I went through my pictures to write this I was reminded that my favorite trips are the ones to places that are so wildly different from where I live. This definitely fit that bill. I was going to write about that whole trip here, but it got too long, so here’s Laos. Look out for my next post on Vietnam, and then one after that on Cambodia.

We really super desperately wanted to go to Thailand, and this is one of my top bucket list items (along with South Africa and Iceland), but it was pretty dangerous there at the time of our trip. We flew into Bangkok and stayed at an airport hotel and then quickly left the next morning for Laos.

To be honest I don’t remember much of this trip because it was almost 11 years ago (WHAT?! Did I say that already? I’m still shocked.), and much of this blog is based off of journals I wrote and pictures I took, but I very clearly remember that first night. We were at a pretty low end hotel with pretty low end service because it was “just one night by the airport” to avoid any dangerous areas of Bangkok and head out the next day. And also, our toilet was broken. There was no one to contact about this. I was up all night jetlagged. So I’m awake with no toilet which quite simply means I have to go down to the creepy dark lobby in a super foreign country every time I have to pee in the middle of the night. I hated it, I will never forget it, I never want to do anything like this again.

Ok I survived and we made it to Laos.

Laos was the country that we added into our trip after canceling Thailand. It’s the country that people (aka the internet) said we could skip. I am SO glad we didn’t, as this might’ve been my favorite stop. We spent 4 nights in Luang Prabang and it was fascinating.

We saw a TON of temples. They were beautiful and unique and cultural and cool to see, but we didn’t need to see all of them. It gets a little redundant after the eight millionth temple. I don’t know what’s what so here’s some pictures of them.

We climbed the 400 or so steps to the top of Mount Phou Si, which provided us with 360 degree views of the entire city. This was beautiful and also super hot because it was summer and right before rainy season so SUPER humid. (You’ll notice from the sweat and pimples in our pictures that this was the case every day, but the 400 steps really exacerbated it.)

According to this picture, we went to the Luang Prabang National Museum (insert shoulder shrug emoji here). That’s all of the information I have for you on this matter.

The next day, we took a full day boat tour to a bunch of different little villages. This was one of my favorite days of the trip. It was fascinating to see the wildly different lifestyle that the people here live. We basically spent the day learning about the different trades of the different groups and villages that paid for their livelihoods.

Our first stop was a Whiskey village where we learned about how they make their whiskey by hand. There is literally no technology anywhere, and just about everything is done by hand. There were some whiskey tastings included in our tour, and we could also bring home a bottle for approximately 2 USD. Oh, did I mention that the whiskey is infused with snakes? Yeah so that was a thing. Something about infusing the spirits on the animals in the drink and then the drinker. I’m not sure, and I actually don’t remember at all, that’s just what one random blog on my random internet search just told me.

Our next stop on our boat trip was an old cave. It was pretty cool to see everything that was preserved in this cave, and it felt like many of the temples we saw except it was a cave. It was like a giant shrine to Buddha, but it was a cave. Pretty interesting. Also, there are markings on the outside of the cave showing how high the river rose in different years during the rainy season. This was mind-blowing. We climbed a pretty good amount of steps to get inside this cave, and the markings from 1966 and 2008 were still way above our heads. Super cool and also crazy.

The next village we boated to was a silk making village. Like, starting from the silk worm and ending with a scarf. We also saw this again later in our trip, and I got more pictures of the worms and stuff. In this village I only got pictures of the silk and the not so high tech machine used to make the scarves. Remember that whole no technology, everything done by hand thing?

The next day we went to a pottery and basket making village. Again, all done by hand. One person does the spinning and one person does the shaping. It’s really amazing to see what these people do by hand, especially knowing that there are machines that we have to do these things for us in the US. I wonder if they know these machines exist and just can’t afford them, or if they legitimately are not aware. Because, no technology (are you sensing a theme?). Also, they were awesome and they made beautifully symmetric pottery. Like, what?

According to my pictures, we then went to some bear conservation place and also saw some waterfalls and swam in a lake or something. Looks like I probably thought it was very pretty at the time.

And then we just strolled through a little village and felt like assholes and complete outsiders. The tiny kids in these villages know how to say “you can buy one for five dollars,” in just about every language, and it makes you want to buy all of them for all of the dollars.

Ok so the next day was elephant day, and I want to give a disclaimer here. This trip happened ELEVEN years ago. I was 22 years old, and just out of college. I did not know how to book a vacation, I was too pathetic to even do any food research (like, what was wrong with me?) let alone activity research. This whole trip was planned through a travel agency, and elephant day was literally us walking through Luang Prabang and seeing a bunch of signs about spending days with elephants and picking one to take a tour. If it’s not clear at this point that I did not know about the harsh treatment of elephants in these places at the time, I do not know how to make it more clear. I was unaware, so yes, I rode an elephant. I know now that you’re not supposed to do that. I did not know then. When I go to Thailand one day, I will visit a more humane elephant sanctuary and I will not ride one.

That being said, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but it was really cool.

We also did a kayak ride as part of this day trip, and some naked six ish year olds jumped on our kayak and tried to flip us. It was cute. I don’t have pictures of this because digital cameras and water don’t mix well (remember digital cameras?).

On our last day in Laos, we got up at 4:30 am to watch the alms giving ceremony. This is a big ceremony with drums and music where the monks in the city walk down the street with baskets and people put food in their baskets – fruits, rice, etc. Whatever they get is their alotted food for the day. Can you imagine relying on this for your food for the day? If you’ve been here a while or you know anything about me, you know that I am pretty food obsessed (see here, here, here, and here). This would not work for me. I don’t think I’ll become a monk.

We then walked through a little street market and saw some really fascinating items that are sold, I believe to eat. And then our last stop before the airport was a cultural center showcasing Lao clothing and culture throughout the decades. It was interesting to see but VERY small and really just a way to kill time before our flight. And I guess also some place where they made cool metal bowls and jewelry and stuff, of course by hand.